A couple of people have pointed to the article where Marvin Goodfriend proposes a tax on cash .
Two things come to mind: Hello. A name like "Goodfriend" on an article like this and your bullshit detectors aren't pegged? With the Ron's Angels hoax and the recent flap over that Bush bio it's pretty plain that nobody in conventional media is doing any fact checking, but out here in the blog world we're presumably smart enough to not drool on our keyboards, so we shouldn't fall for these things, right?
The second is that I think it was Larry Niven who had this wonderful satire about how cash should be made of uranium. It would prevent hoarding and keep money in circulation because if you accumulated too much of it it'd go critical, he had a bunch of other good reasons, I'm gonna have to track it down and read it. And with a short enough half-life many of his reasons have many of the same advantages given in the taxing cash proposal.
Those seriously interested in this should look for more infuration on demurrage .
Friday, October 29th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com